Emergency medical treatment for hemorrhage control often calls for the administration of direct pressure and intravenous fluid resuscitation. This can be particularly true in the case of combat casualty care in a far forward military or hostile environment where resources commonly found in hospital emergency rooms are unavailable.
Although intravenous fluid resuscitation can often provide relatively prompt therapeutic benefit to a patient, a recent statement by the Department of Defense Prehospital Combat Casualty Care Fluid Resuscitation Consortium indicated that cold or room temperature fluid may not provide any benefit whatsoever. In fact, in some cases, the delivery of cold or room temperature fluid may even be harmful to the patient. In general, the fluid must be warmed before administration in order to generate the desired therapeutic effect.
Although some technologies exist for portable heating of intravenous fluids, they are generally battery operated, making them prone to short rucksack shelf life and prohibitively heavy.